How to Use an Ice Axe: Basic Self Belay Snow Hiking Techniques

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For six years, I taught up-and-coming mountaineers, alpinists, and climbers the ins and outs of climbing on snow. I was an Senior Instructor for the Colorado Mountain Club's High Altitude Mountaineering School. The whole point of this school is to prepare students to take on glaciated peaks in the far off reaches of the world.

But before anyone can take on the giants, they first need to be competent on the variable conditions of snow, and that can be done close to home.

Snow climbing is just more complicated because snow is more complicated. It changes faster (a lot faster) than rock, and often in ways that are significant but hard to detect. This is, after all, why people get caught in avalanches.

That being said, snow climbing with an ice axe doesn’t have to come within a country mile of avalanche terrain. The more moment-by-moment nuances have to do with what techniques to use to travel safely over the changing terrain. That’s why I broke the video down into uphill and downhill techniques, and then cross-referenced those with “soft” snow and “hard” snow. You need to do different things based on those factors. Add in one more complication - do you have crampons or MICROspikes on your feet or not - and you have a small enough list of considerations to be manageable, but also comprehensive enough to cover the major considerations you should have in mind as you are deciding on what technique to use, when.

This last variable, traction on your feet, is an important one, because it typically separates the mountaineers and alpinists from the hikers and backpackers. Of course, this makes perfect sense. The former two are out there seeking out snow and mixed (ice, snow, and/or rock) climbing conditions. The later two are mostly hoping for dry conditions and are saving weight in order to cover a lot of miles. For one group it’s the rule, and for the other it is the exception.

So, if you decide to take just an axe for the early or late season parts of your thru-hike (let’s say), then you better know how to use it when footing isn’t so great. To that point, it is also interesting to note that the new “ultralight” (their name, not mine) ice axes actually weigh less than a set of MICROspikes. And the axes are definitely more versatile than items that stay on your feet; but they also have a steeper learning curve than something you just “keep walking” in.

I can get a 55cm The Camp USA Corsa Alpine at a weight penalty of about 10 ounces, for example, where MICROspikes weigh a couple of ounces more, for the pair. And then there is the added consideration that a pound on your foot is equivalent to about 5 pounds on your back in terms of energy and oxygen usage, when it comes to carrying the thing. This get’s back to my old axiom that knowledge is a universal tool, and a weightless one, at that. If you have the knowledge of the many ways to use an axe to keep you safe, you will cover more use cases and do it at less weight and energy costs than the alternative.

This isn’t knocking MICROspikes. I have them, and I use them a lot! I use them so much that I still use them (sometimes) in the summer when we can get a lot of loose trails, and the extra bite on my feet can be very helpful. And in winter, when I’m not in crampons, I’m almost always in my MICROspikes.

I guess the point is, I usually have a trekking pole or an axe with me, regardless of what’s on my feet, and if I had to choose only one of the three items to have with me when I really need them, I would choose the axe. I can just do more with it to keep me safe than I can with either of the foot traction or the trekking pole. Just as examples, you can’t arrest a fall safely with a trekking pole, and you can’t kick into hard snow with MICROspikes - but you can cut steps with an axe!

So, hopefully this video helps with anyone interested in increasing that safety margin (when it makes sense) by properly using an axe. There’s a reason that we can trace the origin of axes back to alpenstocks of the fourteenth century; they are that important.